


It Should Mean Laughter

by hopeless_eccentric



Series: (Free! That's right! Free!) Penumbra Commissions [41]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cuddling & Snuggling, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, Heist, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Poisoning, Recovery, Whump, hoo boy this was Fun to write but in a strictly cruel way, juno gets poisoned and angst happens the musical, this one's a bit heavy folks but DAMN the angst goes hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29503650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric
Summary: They had not only won in style, but in approximately twenty minutes. With only a two minute walk to make their way from the mark’s private gambling room to the spot where they were meant to flag down the Ruby 7, Nureyev frankly couldn’t see much room for things to go wrong.Peter Nureyev did not consider himself to be a self-sabotaging person, especially in the context of such an important mission. However, there was no other explanation for why someone who had lived a life even remotely similar to his own would have such a cruelly optimistic streak.finally got around to writing a poison whump fic. thanks for the prompt @zenodotus-xxiv !
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: (Free! That's right! Free!) Penumbra Commissions [41]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921492
Comments: 28
Kudos: 137





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "We clutch our bellies and roll on the floor...  
> When I say this, it should mean laughter,  
> Not poison"
> 
> long story short ya Individual finally stole a richard siken quote as a title
> 
> Content warnings for poisoning (note: this is something slipped into a glass just in case that makes it worse for anybody), slight unreality, fever, alcohol mention, confusion, infidelity mention (not among any main couples), illness

Nureyev had been a fool to expect the job to go smoothly. 

It wasn’t too difficult to find himself eased into that notion. There was a certain comfort in a familiar job, so much that one might convince themselves that the con was an easy one. However, playing married to the love of his life and making threats over drinks and a few too many cards was all too reminiscent of their first job together to provide him with much stress.

Nureyev had lost a pair of hands, a small handful of fake creds, and barely an inch of patience before Juno tossed the slit in his gown aside, drew his blaster, and laid an accusation of cheating on the red velvet table as if it were a pair of aces blinking up at the pair of sharp-eyed gentlemen doing their best to stack the decks. The hardest part of the entire affair had been hiding his smirk when Juno ripped the coordinate-laden napkin from their opponent’s hand and stuffed it down the front of his dress for safe keeping.

They had not only won in style, but in approximately twenty minutes. With only a two minute walk to make their way from the mark’s private gambling room to the spot where they were meant to flag down the Ruby 7, Nureyev frankly couldn’t see much room for things to go wrong.

Peter Nureyev did not consider himself to be a self-sabotaging person, especially in the context of such an important mission. However, there was no other explanation for why someone who had lived a life even remotely similar to his own would have such a cruelly optimistic streak.

“I must say, that was quite impressive for your first time as my good luck charm, my dearest Rosalind,” Nureyev chuckled, the sound bright with victory, even as the velvet shadows of the back exit hallway clung around both of their shoulders like a creeping fog.

Juno snorted, though the laugh sounded a little too distracted for Nureyev’s comfort.

“You can drop the act, Orlando,” he teased.

Nureyev opened his mouth to reply, but found himself cut off by the sensation of something slithering through his chest, coiling and squirming and threatening to burrow somewhere around his left ventricle. He would have dismissed the sensation as merely an adrenaline crash if not for the fact that the invader thrashed when Juno stumbled halfway through a stride, barely managing to right himself, even with Nureyev’s arm around him.

“Juno, are you quite alright?”

“Just gonna have to have a word with Buddy about these heels, that’s all,” Juno joked.

Nureyev had known him long enough to know the gentle shoulder-punch of good humor when it occupied Juno’s voice. It was not an emotion characterized by an eye that stuck to every object as if it were barely holding its shape. It was certainly not heralded by a shaky tone, nor an iron grip on Nureyev’s arm.

“You didn’t roll your ankle, did you?” Nureyev tried to press as gently as possible.

“You didn’t cook tonight, right?”

“Dear, you cooked tonight,” Nureyev swallowed, bringing himself to a halt so he had a chance to cast a proper look down at Juno. “Are you positive you’re fine?”

Mere minutes ago, Juno’s blood red lips had hardly restrained a flickering look of confidence, replacing it with the stony neutrality that best fit the situation at hand. Either way, his gaze had been hard and his jaw had been set and every scar had seemed to reach into Nureyev’s chest and plant something warm and idiotic and completely welcome there until they were in a private enough space that he might have a chance to look upon Juno’s careful confidence in its true form.

Whatever expression he was expecting, it certainly wasn’t a shifty, far-off gaze and lips parted by breathing that was just barely too labored for Nureyev’s liking.

“Why don’t we sit down somewhere?” Nureyev prompted with a slight tug at Juno’s elbow, nodding towards the nearest door. He didn’t particularly care if it was a bathroom or a gambling room or a broom closet. With Juno barely mumbling out a response and the red light of the emergency exit sign glaring down his neck, his first instinct was to remove the both of them from the hallway instantly, and after two decades of thieving on his own, he had long since learned that his first instinct tended to be a very good one. “There you are, love. Just put your weight on me for now.”

“We should just keep going,” Juno tried to protest, though Nureyev couldn’t even fathom considering his words when he stumbled again, his hands missing Peter’s peacoat. Nureyev barely managed to catch him, doing so with a stifled cry of his own and the unquiet thud of his back hitting the lower wall.

“My love,” Nureyev started, “do you think you can manage to make it to the next door?”

Juno didn’t reply for far too long, his face buried somewhere in the breast of Nureyev’s coat as he gasped for ragged breaths from some kind of exertion Nureyev couldn’t seem to see. He didn’t seem to have it in him to move, even as Nureyev wrenched his knees out of their bent, staggering position from where Juno had all but crashed into him.

“Juno,” Nureyev pressed.

“Yeah,” Juno finally swallowed. “Nureyev, what did you order from the bar?”

“Something with a disgusting alcohol content, I assure you,” Nureyev returned, trying his damndest to keep his voice from shaking as he helped Juno through the last few steps into what seemed to be a one stall bathroom of sorts. “This part of the galaxy, especially locales such as these, often find themselves with quite the abnormal amount of genetically engineered bacteria in the drinks. I find it best to skirt the issue with a high-alcohol beverage, just to kill it off. If anything remains and I’m forced to take a sip, I’m far less likely to get poisoned.”

“Wait, go back,” Juno paused him.

“Over which topic?”

Nureyev’s words came out strained with the effort of shoving the door closed behind them. However, Juno spared him much more of an ache in his arms, for he found a more comfortable spot resting his weight on the sink while Nureyev caught his own breath.

“You were saying something about bacteria,” Juno reminded him, though his voice was absentminded as he busied himself with turning on the faucet in a dozen different configurations until he found just the right temperature to run his wrists under.

“Yes,” Nureyev began, his words slowing with every subsequent heartbeat that passed. “It’s rather difficult to get caught for poisoning someone if they succumb to a strangely fast-acting strain of deadly bacteria that seems to have the perfect genetic makeup to spread only to whoever consumes it.”

“Shit,” Juno breathed.

For the first time, his gaze seemed to find something it could focus on. Nureyev almost wished it hadn’t been his reflection, for that would have allowed him temporary freedom from the prison of realization. However, Juno looked to his mirror image in solace, and Nureyev was not too terrible a person not to provide it.

“I just have two questions,” Nureyev started, doing his best to shatter the lump in his throat for long enough that he could speak. “First, what did you order?”

Juno swallowed.

“Water.”

“Dear God.”

“And what’s the second one?”

“How capable are you of escaping right this instant?”

“That bad, huh?” Juno breathed. 

Nureyev expected a true response to follow the sour joke. Juno said no such thing, merely going back to running his wrists under what had to be freezing water. However, when that seemed not to satisfy him, he merely shook his hands dry, pressing his wrists to the cold of the sink basin, then his neck and cheeks in turn.

“Juno?” Nureyev called.

“Mhm?”

“Dear, did you hear me?”

“Goddammit, why the hell is it so hot in here?”

Nureyev swallowed a curse.

“Love,” he pressed once more.

Juno’s head snapped up as if it had been blasterfire that summoned his attention, rather than a single syllable mourned across a thousand miles of stale, gray air.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Oh, dear God, Juno—”

“Shit,” Juno broke him off, hanging and shaking his head furiously. “Goddammit, my fiancee’s gonna kill me.”

“Beg pardon?”

Juno swallowed.

“We’re in a seedy bathroom, it smells like alcohol, I’m burning up, and I can’t remember anything that happened to me in the last week, so yeah, whatever happened, I think—”

Juno broke himself off to shake his head.

“Juno, I—”

“I don’t cheat,” he protested, as if in three wilting syllables, Nureyev could possibly have accused him of such a thing. “Goddammit, tell me we didn’t—and you’re all dressed up, fuck, this could’ve been an actual goddamn date—”

“Not a date,” Nureyev cut in as firmly as he could, just to stop Juno’s hands from breaking with the force with which he gripped the sink. “If it does anything at all to ease your mind, your lipstick is perfectly intact. We haven’t so much as kissed.”

“You called me—”

“Dear,” Nureyev broke him off before pausing for a second to stomach the rest of his words before they could leave him. “I have always been affectionate with my friends. Now, you’re incredibly ill, so I think we ought to get you to a medical professional, regardless of whether or not you think you know me.”

Nureyev knew better than to lay a hand on him while his shoulders were still visibly rising with tension, even as he tried to ground himself with the cool, futile water streaming from the faucet. That didn’t keep him from raising one useless arm into the cavernous air between them, as if giving the flickering death-white lights something to bounce off of that wasn’t a miserably checked tile floor could do anything to help him.

“God, I’m an idiot. I’m going home,” Juno finally decided, throwing the faucet off and turning on his heel so quickly he all but collided with Nureyev’s arm.

“Juno, I am so sorry—”

Juno didn’t particularly seem to care how sorry he was. With the way his long-lost gaze was sliding over Nureyev’s face, Peter sincerely doubted he had much capacity for any thought at all. However, the self-sabotaging optimistic streak that had driven that dagger into his back in the hall saw fit to twist the blade when something that might have been recognition flashed in Juno’s eye. He didn’t have long to cherish it, however, for Juno’s knees buckled next.

Sense told him that it was a terrible idea to touch Juno at the moment, especially with his eye glassy and his mind twisting itself in knots as he tried to figure out exactly where he had found himself. However, instinct wrapped his arms around Juno’s shoulder, if not to keep him upright, to take the brunt of the fall for him as the pair toppled and slid down the nearest wall.

If Juno hadn’t been nearly jittering, his breaths slow and shallow and uneven, Nureyev might have had the gall to care about the condition of his coat after coming in contact with that floor. However, he could bring himself to do little more than cradle the back of Juno’s head with his hand and press it into his shoulder, as if that would do anything to ease his pains.

“Are you alright, love?” Nureyev started after a long moment, barely able to regret the pet name once it had passed his lips. However, with the cumulative number of adorations between the two of them counting down instead of up, he did his best to swallow his guilt.

Something in the pit of his stomach crumpled when Juno burst out into cold, mirthless laughter.

“Juno, I—”

“Love,” Juno snorted. “God, I must really be dying if I can’t even dream about you right.”

“Dear, whatever could you mean by that?”

“It’s always darling with you,” Juno shook his head. “Even when it feels like you really, really want me dead. Just rubbing salt in the wound. Hell, you probably deserve to, but—”

Nureyev didn’t need to know what he was talking about, just that every subsequent word was another second not spent doing anything at all to help him while he withered in real time.

“Shh, Juno,” Nureyev started as gently as he could, “why don’t we let bygones be bygones, hm? Now, I need you to trust me. I don’t know how much of a challenge that’s going to be, and I apologize that it must be one at all, but you are incredibly ill, my darling. I’m going to get an acquaintance of mine on my comms and send for help, alright?”

Nureyev didn’t exactly expect an answer as he ripped his comms from his pocket with a fumbling hand, for his dominant one was busy running soothing fingers down the back of Juno’s neck.

“You’re really here, huh?” Juno managed into his chest as Nureyev finished typing out the number.

“Of course, my darling,” he forced the pet name once more, knowing it was a tiny sacrifice for the sake of Juno’s comfort in what he was unwilling to accept might be their final moment together. “Of course.”

“Why the hell’d you ever come back?”

“Juno, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” Nureyev swallowed, turning his gaze to the comms when someone on the other end picked up. “Thank God—Captain Aurinko, I’m going to do my best to extract Juno. He’s been poisoned, and by the looks of things, he’ll be needing immediate medical care upon returning to the ship.”

If Buddy responded, Nureyev did not hear her, rather, doing his best to keep his heart from falling out of his chest when Juno’s visible eyelid began to droop.

“Do you think you can try to walk for me, my dear detective?” Nureyev started at some point after the call ended.

“Not sure.”

Nureyev swallowed, gritting his teeth through the effort of dragging them both to their feet once more. A thousand miles away, he could almost hear Juno’s heels clicking on the floor with the handful of stumbling steps he managed to take when largely manhandled into the hallway, the lights behind them be damned.

“Now, this isn’t too hard, is it?” Nureyev did his best to prompt with a smile.

“I dunno why I’ve gotta be here for all of this,” Juno huffed. “Why can’t I just wake up?”

Perhaps it was kinder to allow Juno to believe the encounter to have been a dream. Nureyev, however, was selfish by nature.

“This isn’t a dream, my love,” he explained through strained words as he managed to kick open the emergency exit door and send them tumbling into the chilled night air of the street. “We’re doing a job together.”

“Like hell we are.”

“You’re playing my wife,” Nureyev persevered, as if every subsequent word gave him energy for another few steps down the street and towards where the Ruby 7, from the sound of its familiar purr, was waiting. “We won a game of poker in exchange for a few coordinates and a bribe.”

“Just my brain mixing together what it already knows, Nureyev,” Juno snorted mirthlessly. “I’m not an idiot.”

“Then tell me, Juno, where is your eye?”

“My cybernetic doesn’t dream with me.”

Nureyev huffed, though something bright bloomed in his chest at the sight of Vespa Ilkay’s lamplight-stretched shadow racing along the pavement towards them.

“Juno,” Nureyev started, “would you believe me if I told you I love you?”

Juno let out a cold laugh.

“Now? Not in a million years.”

“I just wanted you to hear it once more,” Nureyev swallowed, Juno’s words ringing like blasterfire in his ears as his lover finally went limp.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hooooooooooooooooooooooooooo boy
> 
> Content warnings for blood mention, difficulty sleeping, implied former drug/alcohol use, illness/injury (aftermath of poisoning), mention of past unhealthy relationships

Nureyev had been given a three hour window in which Juno might wake up, if at all. That window happened to be far enough in the future to give him time to dwell over the matter.

The state of his quarters was abysmal, and he was all too aware of this fact. He made his first ever semblance of an attempt to clean it if just to have a clear path through which to pace.

Perhaps it was not the healthiest of behaviors, but Nureyev doubted it ranked much lower than foregoing food and sleep, just because he could not stomach the idea of either at a time like this.

Perhaps there were better places to pace. However, his quarters were safe in some way the remainder of the ship was not. There was not a member of the crew who had been untouched by Juno Steel, and as such, every haunt of the vessel seemed haunted by him as well. His dry jokes and Jet’s humorless responses, save for those jokes he made specifically for himself, ached in the walls of the engine room, while the kitchen still carried the ghosts of Juno and Vespa fighting over what kind of oil to cook with.

The medbay was off limits not because it contained any ghost of Juno Steel, but rather, because it contained the lifeless lady himself, his lungs wheezing away to the tune of a half dozen different machines doing what Peter Nureyev could not by keeping him alive.

His quarters, at the very least, were neutral. They were almost always a place of work and almost never a place of rest and every once in a blue moon, a place where he could pace his legs to breaking and allow his mind to run unchecked like some panicked creature toppling over every one of his carefully curated files and bleeding half to death from all the paper cuts.

Juno had never mentioned a fiancee, nor any reason he might immediately conclude a dying sensation to be at the hands of recreational substances, rather than murderous ones. He had mentioned the strange dreams typical of the THEIA Spectrum, though he had never done more than admit that Nureyev appeared in them on occasion.

Nureyev would have taken that ignorance in a heartbeat over the poison-addled confession that, in whatever dream his mind had cast Nureyev in, Juno could not believe that he loved him.

He could deal with Juno having some tentative pieces of a past he did not want to relive for long enough to bring them up in conversation. That did not necessarily denote mistrust, as much as a near-spiraling mind felt it should. However, if some part of Juno’s subconscious mind clung onto the surety that Nureyev could never look upon him with affection, he was afraid that was another matter altogether.

Nureyev would have spent another hour spontaneously sorting and unsorting his pens over the matter had his watch’s alarm not cut through the air like a bolt of blasterfire and pointed his steps towards the medbay.

Sensibly, he should have been excited at the prospect that Juno might be waking soon, if not to find some comfort in regards to his strange new worries, to at least see him moving and breathing with slightly less aid. Despite that, every one of his footsteps down the inky hallways of the ship could have been the strike of an executioner’s drum, counting down moments to live in cruel, even quarter notes.

He wasn’t sure how his argument with Vespa allowing him to wait through a few of those ungodly hours of night was won, just that it was likely not any trick of his tongue that won it. In tracking the movement of her eyes, he didn’t have to guess that he looked abysmal. He couldn’t remember whether or not he had removed his makeup in a fit of emotion, and frankly, he doubted anything that might have been remaining on his face looked presentable anyway.

Nureyev had been in too much debt for far too long to spend his life partaking in the courtesy of favors. However, he couldn’t help but notice that when one was usually presentable and failed that standard by a noticeable margin, one tended to be handed a few too many things for free.

Frankly, he hated the pity. If anything, he could see himself deserving of a certain level of scorn or beratement. Being handled by the crew like damaged goods was enough to drag him out of the buzzing static of his mind for long enough to feel resentment, which was, by his book, far better than nothing at all.

He didn’t have long to ponder this before Juno, for the first time in hours, shifted.

Nureyev’s first instinct was to rush to the chair by his side, pressing adorations into kisses to his face and hands and hairline. However, given that his first instinct had nearly gotten Juno killed the day prior, Nureyev made a point of quieting it.

Whether or not Juno would even recognize him upon waking was still up in the air. If anything, it was best to start with a neutral approach.

“Hello, Juno,” he began, trying his best to keep his voice softer than his footsteps as he paced forward. “It’s good to see you awake.”

Juno tried and failed to raise his head. Nureyev froze in his stilted march, only resuming when Juno raised both arms in a gesture for him to come closer.

“Are you feeling any better?” Nureyev prompted upon taking a seat at Juno’s side, swallowing down just how strange it felt to be so near to him, and yet so resolutely platonic in any comforts he could offer. At the very least, Juno seemed to recognize that he was a potentially comforting figure. Nureyev wasn’t sure if he could hope for more than that. “That was quite a drink.”

“You’re acting weird,” Juno pointed out.

Nureyev chuckled.

“Blunt as ever, I see,” he smiled, the reflection in the curved glass of the window showing that it was not his practiced grin, but rather one that was soft and sweet and all too weary for his liking.

“Nureyev,” Juno groaned.

“How’s your head, dear?” Nureyev deflected.

“I dunno, fuzzy, spinning, whatever,” Juno huffed. “Full of your goddamn cologne.”

“My sincerest apologies--”

“Not a bad thing,” Juno broke him off with a weak chuckle. “Same brand as always, huh?”

“Yes, quite so,” Nureyev swallowed. “I’m glad to see you awake, my love. There are very few things that have scared me quite as much as the last few hours have.”

“Honey—“ Juno started, the syllables dying in the inky air of the medbay.

Nureyev shook his head.

“I missed you,” he clarified. “I get to have you for the rest of my life, though. There are far better things to use your concern on at the moment. Most notably, how you’re feeling.”

“Bad,” Juno snorted.

Nureyev rolled his eyes.

“You know what I mean.”

“Okay,” Juno started, a lazy smile still blooming on his face. “Like my esophagus went through a shredder and somehow that also made all my bones liquid.”

Nureyev grimaced. At the very least, he doubted Juno was being anything less than honest.

“May I ask you another question, my love?”

Juno shrugged.

“Juno, what did you mean when you said I was acting oddly?”

“Well, first of all, you haven’t even kissed me good morning,” Juno pretended to be offended, though his glare melted into a fond smile when Nureyev rolled his eyes. “And you’re walking on eggshells. Your posture’s way too good for three in the goddamn morning.”

“Dear,” Nureyev started, feeling a relieved exhale upon finally using a familiar pet name, rather than those he had preferred when first making Juno’s acquaintance, “do you remember any of what you said to me while you were losing consciousness?”

Juno squeezed his eyes shut for a moment.

“In the bathroom, right?”

“And on the way out.”

Juno reached into Nureyev’s lap to take one of his formerly folded hands and give it a squeeze.

“I think I thought I was dreaming, for part of it, at least,” he thought aloud. “After everything with Miasma, and—well, after—a lot of my dreams started looking like you. I dunno if I’m really awake enough to go through it all, but—”

Nureyev shook his head.

“Then don’t, my love.”

“You’d just kinda say the worst of what I was thinking, and if I was lucky, you might kiss me on the way out,” Juno explained. “You kiss better in real life, you know.”

“Are you still angry I haven’t kissed the morning breath from your lips?” Nureyev chuckled.

“No,” Juno huffed, before amending himself. “Maybe.”

“All you had to do was ask,” Nureyev smiled, pausing himself to press a peck to Juno’s lips and forcing down the bubble of sorrow at the feeling of them rendered dry from the oxygen machine.

“I thought I was implying it hard enough,” Juno grumbled with little success, for his smile kept poking through. “That make you feel better about everything? I just chugged some bacteria and was expecting you to be a hell of a lot meaner to me.”

“Surprisingly so,” Nureyev sighed.

Nureyev had been aware of Juno’s last year in terms of his mental health. While the gorey details were, as far as he could tell, pared down for the sake of conversation and what was most comfortable to remember, enough late night talks and explanations of nightmares and discussions of which streams to avoid and why had laid at least a patchwork of Juno’s psyche bare to him.

The idea of being the vessel for his subconscious mind’s negative self talk was an uncomfortable one, he had to admit. However, there was a certain solace in knowing the two of them, he and the twisted, yet somehow, idealized version of himself that resided in Juno’s mind, held some differences.

For one, Juno couldn’t ever see that caricature of Peter Nureyev telling him he loved him.

Unable to bear that thought for long, Nureyev decided to take action.

He didn’t wait to be invited to change his position from the rigidity of his seat at Juno’s side to stretching out beside him. While Nureyev didn’t invite anything more, Juno’s bitter laugh still echoing in his mind, he also didn’t complain when Juno wrapped an arm over his waist of his own volition and decided Nureyev’s collarbone made a far better pillow than any of the bed’s cushioning.

There was a certain weight to skin on skin contact. Nureyev could touch any number of things to ground himself, but something about the warmth and pressure of another person bore him down out of the stratosphere better than anything else. If he wanted to psychoanalyze himself, he might chalk it up to some flaw in his childhood or his adamance on independence. However, after spending the last several hours making a mess of his mental filing system, he did not want to think about it in the slightest.

Instead, he squeezed Juno’s hand until he could not be sure whose heartbeat pulsed beneath his fingers, just to remind himself that Juno was alive and recovering and that his misstep in judgement when escorting Juno to a seat instead of walking to the car was not fatal.

“Quit thinking so loud,” Juno complained into his chest, giving his arm a playful whack.

“Love,” Nureyev chided, words muffled into the top of Juno’s head.

“Don’t ‘love’ me,” Juno snorted.

“I’ll love you as much as I want, thank you very much.”

Nureyev didn’t look down, but he was almost certain Juno was rolling his eye. He had heard the same affectionate huff-turned-chuckle a few too many times to mistake it for anything else.

“So what’s on your mind?” Juno pressed, just in case Nureyev got the chance to worm his way out of the question.

“Can’t we wait until you’re more awake?”

“If I’m doing my math right, I just slept for ten hours,” Juno snorted. “This is the most well rested you’re gonna get me until the day you lay me in my grave.”

“Don’t say that.”

Juno swallowed, his grin palpably fading against Nureyev’s chest.

“I’m sorry, I just—”

“You weren’t there,” Nureyev sighed.

“I got out kinda easy, huh?”

Nureyev shook his head.

“It’s not that,” he huffed, words of explanation staying distinctly far from his tongue. “Perhaps the humor might be better suited to another time, if you don’t mind. I still haven’t entirely convinced myself you’re still here.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

Nureyev swallowed.

“I want to ask you one more question before I request anything of you,” Nureyev started slowly, “especially if you consider yourself awake enough for a difficult discussion.”

Juno sighed.

“What else did I say?”

“You—” Nureyev cleared his throat, trying and failing to find some gentle way to describe Juno’s assumption, “as far as I can tell, pieced together that the two of us had been on a date, you couldn’t remember where you were due to some substance or another, and your fiancee was going to be upset with you.”

“Fuck,” Juno huffed.

If his expression had changed, Nureyev couldn’t tell, for one of the hands that had been so comfortably resting upon Nureyev’s chest mere moments before came to cover his mouth.

“I don’t—” Juno broke off to shake his head. “I don’t think I’m ready to go into all of that yet.”

“Of course, love,” Nureyev replied, hoping the hand running up and down Juno’s back might help ease his words out of him.

“Remember how much of a mess I was when you met me?” He finally managed.

“Not so much of a mess.”

“You live in a swamp, Nureyev,” Juno snorted.

“Perhaps I have misguided standards, but that is no reason to insult—”

“It used to be a lot worse is what I’m saying,” Juno cut him off before the mood could get too jovial. “I was engaged at one point. Less than ideal relationship. She, uh—left the day of the wedding.”

“Oh, Juno, I’m—”

“Don’t apologize,” Juno broke him off. “I don’t think you need to be a detective to put together that even if she had stuck around for the wedding, things weren’t gonna get much better. Blowing a couple thousand creds on one day doesn’t fix your relationship, it just sucks a couple of thousand creds out of your pocket.”

“I’m sorry you had to go through the ordeal at all,” Nureyev amended.

“Deep down, I think I knew it was bad. Spent a lot of time wondering what it would be like to get out,” Juno pressed on. “I think I panicked and put together some stuff that wasn’t true based on some old guilt for wishing it was over, if I had to guess. I mean, I wanted to get married, so I felt guilty as all hell when my instincts got the best of me and told me to get the hell out of there.”

Nureyev didn’t wait for the words to finish passing Juno’s lips, but rather, for his muscles to finally relax, for then, he knew he was truly done with the subject. When that moment finally came, he pulled his arms a little tighter around Juno’s shoulder and leaned up to press a kiss to the top of his head.

“This doesn’t change anything, you know,” he started, as gently as he could.

“It had better not,” Juno tried his best to chuckle.

“You know what I mean,” Nureyev smiled. “I’m proud of you for being open about this, especially with your health the way it is. You don’t need to say any more.”

“Good,” Juno sighed a breath of relief. “Didn’t expect you to, but it’s nice to hear you say it.”

“Of course, my love.”

“And I know you, so I know you’re gonna worry about me being happy and secretly wanting out or whatever, so I’m just telling you now—”

Juno’s words fell away when Nureyev laughed, high and reedy with exhaustion.

“My dear,” he finally started, “there are a great many things I worry about on a daily basis. You are seldom one of them.”

Juno raised an eyebrow.

“And when am I one of them?”

“Well, you see, there was this glass of water with a genetically engineered bacterium—”

“Shut up,” Juno snorted.

“You and your kind words,” Nureyev smiled. “I don’t worry about you, Juno. Perhaps I don’t have the poetry to tell you why tonight, but I think the two of us share the kind of bond that comes once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky.”

“Wow,” Juno breathed, “that was really sappy.”

“On second thought—”

Juno’s laughter cut him off.

“I dunno if I had the chance to tell you last night, ‘cause I was, you know, poisoned, but while I’m here,” Juno started, rolling over so his chin came to rest atop Nureyev’s chest, “I love you.”

“I love you too, Juno,” Nureyev returned, burying his smile on the top of Juno’s head when he leaned forward to kiss it. “It’s good to hear you say it again. I missed you, my love.”

“It was a long ten hours without you.”

Nureyev prepared a reply, but every word he conjured seemed to wither on his tongue. Instead, he found the best course of action was to lean forward and help Juno up in tandem so their lips could meet. Whether it was to kiss goodnight or good morning or just to celebrate that they were alive and present and could find safety and solace and love in the arms of another, Nureyev did not know.

Frankly, he did not care.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YEEHAW!!
> 
> Thank you so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or ill make them sad again BWAHAHAHA
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!

**Author's Note:**

> AAAAAAAAAAAAAA anyway that was fun to write
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below or ill MAKE IT WORSE BAHAHAHA that was a joke for legal reasons
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


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